


The stars, Like dust

by Gladia_Delmarre



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Love (Good Omens), 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Angst, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Slow Burn, They love each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:35:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24325864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gladia_Delmarre/pseuds/Gladia_Delmarre
Summary: De-structuring of a demon on a starry nightRe-constructing of an angel at the end of the world.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 24





	1. Ripped

**Crowley's thoughts on a starry night**

He waited for the moon to rise, for the first stars to be visible.

He waited silently on the grassy ledge of a ridge.

There are almost no noises, and Crowley can hear his own breathing, light on a clear September night.

If he pays attention, he can also listen to the beating of his heart. Sometimes he thinks that the human body is a stupid instrument and something he would gladly get rid of: especially of that heart, such an inconvenient organ. He understood, with time, that it has different rhythms, a different musicality in reaction to the external world. In reaction to those he meets.

_I've been a bad angel._

_And even worse as a demon. Sure, most times I "did my job". Sometimes I also enjoyed doing it._

_But no demon, I'm ready to swear it, has lived what I experienced. What is my punishment for this? In which circle of Hell should I belong?_

_Perhaps the second, along with the lustful. But demons are made of passions._

_Perhaps the seventh, together with the sodomites. But does the angels’ sex matter? Or the demons'?_

_No, maybe I should chain myself in the ninth. Stuck in the ice with the traitors and the fraudulents. In my desires I chased after your purity hundreds of times. You trust me, I do not know why. But I would betray you, I would do it a thousand times just to have you. I'd betray all of Hell, if only you wanted me._

_But perhaps my punishment is this: living next to you._

_  
Meeting you in the crowd, at an unexpected party. To meet you in a theater, where you overwhelm me with one of your smiles imbued with benevolence. To meet you on top of a hill at sunset, while you hide to hear me play the lyre. Meet you everywhere, for no reason, because these have become the only moments worth living._

_I saw you bent over huge tomes that I don't understand or care about. I spied on you when you were concentrating on reading, and frowned in curiosity._

_I learned the sound of your laughter, that sometimes resonates like a cascade of coins on a marble floor. Argentine, spontaneous. I make you laugh and smile. Even if you don't want to admit it, and often you recompose yourself with that shy schoolboy appearance._

_I smiled with you, when inside my mind I screamed with desire to take your mouth and suck your lips away. I screamed later. Drowning desire in arms that were not yours. Or alone, coming in my own fist, while I gasp your name in sobs. Orgasms that reverberate within me, without ever reaching you, in my bones and skull and teeth._

_  
My punishment is to desire you like this, utterly unable to have you._

_I am content with leftovers, even if I am hungry like crows. And like them, I pray for a loaf, even a crumb, of bread. I'll be happy to take one of your smiles and feed myself when I can't see you. I will keep it aside, save it, inexhaustible food for a soul that is not worthy of being in your shadow. Maybe all you want to give me is a disapproving look. I will keep it with me anyway._

I keep on my skin the feeling of the few times you touched me. _More electrifying than any orgasm I've ever experienced._

Crowley touches his shoulders and bows his head. The starlight is too dim to do his curls justice, almost completely indistinguishable from the dark of the night. They cover his face for a moment until he looks back.

_What do you need, angel?_

_Do you still want people to love Hamlet? They love it, and they will continue to love it, as well as all the other gloomy Shakespeare works. I didn't tell you, but I pushed those too. I did it because of the way you raised your eyebrows that day, parting your lips in childish delight._

_Do you want me to offer you my heart? I would rip it from my chest, tearing open this useless ribcage, made of bones broken by sighs. Here it is, it's yours._

_All you have to do is ask._

_Do you want me to stand by you without ever touching you? I would accept that too. I could live forever waiting for that smile that sometimes stretches your mouth, exposing your teeth and deepening the fine wrinkles around your eyes._

_I do not understand how they can enclose within them the sparkle of the stars and the moon over the sea. How can you have torn them from the sky itself, cobalt in the clouds?_

_I could make you come, be yours. I would only thank you for wanting me, even without ever being satisfied. In my dark passionate desires, I undress you piece by piece, until I see inside your soul._

_I lose myself in your light, pass my tongue over your skin and feel your taste in my mouth._

_I dream of licking my fingers after they've been inside you, because the thought of a part of me inside you is something that destroys me. As if I could be part of something divine again._

Crowley sobs.

He doesn't cry. It is an unstoppable lament that flows from his throat. The lament of hundreds of years and hundreds of lives, of hundreds of hearts offered in sacrifice.

Crowley has a black, quivering insect in the center of his chest. It vibrates its chitinous plaques, and like cicadas in summer it chirps in an endless song. Sometimes it is strong enough to deafen him. How can Aziraphale not hear it? How can a being made of love not be able to listen to the song of his heart?

Maybe this is not true love. Maybe it's just lust and desire.

But he wonders, as he feeds the ducks and the nightingales, who sing in London every now and then unheeded by almost anyone, why any one of the crumbs that Aziraphale leaves on his path would be enough for him.

_A pathetic angel, an even more pathetic demon._

_As long as I can. Until the end of the world._

Crowley hardens his gaze and tightens his jaw when his mouth bends down at the edges for a moment. He swallows one last short breath, sucking it between his teeth.

The night is running out.

  
  
  
  
  
Notes: credits for the translation review (I am Italian mother language) go to Claudia (IG @justletmehavethisusername)


	2. Bare Heart

**(thoughts of Aziraphale a moment before diving into the void)**

It is the moment right before you do something that scares you most.

Aziraphale has long been sitting on that bench, with Crowley on his left, as always. They talked, as always.

And, as always, they have a bottle of wine in their hands.

When Crowley proposed to stay at his place Aziraphale hesitated. A question that perhaps did not require any answer, considering that he no longer has any place to stay.

His whole world was burned away, in this apocalypse-which-did-not-happen.

_Almost everything,_ he corrects himself. Maybe he lost the bookshop, all his precious first editions, all his trinkets and the teacup with wings. But certainly not the memories. His past may be burnt, but not his future, the demon who sits next to him and looks at him with a drawn, tired smile.

Aziraphale watches him lean towards him, like he's has been doing all their life. The oblique light of the street lamp carves shadows on the tight skin on his cheekbones and on his gaunt neck, making the tendons stand out.

Crowley is telling him the truth: they were left alone, there are no more sides or leaders; hell and heaven are farther away than they ever have been. Crowley has been sincere with him, as he never would expect from a demon. Since they met he never lied to him.

Aziraphale knows it now.

As he knows, unfortunately, that he has been far less honest with him. It has been hiding behind his white and shiny face for millennia. His good manners, his presumption, deep in his heart, to be _better than him_. It is this night, on the bench, that all his barriers collapse. He can no longer ignore that Crowley has been his companion since the world was still young. It is Crowley who mourned his demise and faced the fire in the bookshop for him. It was him who got drunk to tears, he was the one who asked him to run away together on a star, once. And it is he who convinced him, long ago, to become friends.

Crowley did nothing but reach out to him. By any means, always discreetly, always silently beside him. He made available every fiber of his being, fragile and rapid, nervous and full of fire. Crowley gave it all. Now he is tired; Aziraphale can see it in the wrinkles around his mouth, which are just a bit deeper, in the way that the sharp shoulders can no longer fill the dusty jacket.

Aziraphale is also tired. He can no longer hide behind walls that have become brittle and thin like rice paper. Crowley could look through them and he would understand everything, if he had not learned, over time, to look away. To mask himself under layers and layers of sarcasm and self-irony.

And when Crowley tells him that he can stay at his place, if he wants, Aziraphale tries one last defense. Perhaps more out of a habit he formed, has been used to for thousands of years, than anything else. But he loses all determination when he sees how the demon, _his demon_ , looks back at him. When he feels his voice caressing his face, his nape, his neck. When he sees Crowley stretching his arm to stop the bus that will take them back to London, despite the light signal indicating Oxford. Crowley isn't asking now. For once, he chooses for them both.

Aziraphale looks at the sky for a moment and he is amazed by how many stars there are, despite how close they are to London. It seems unbelievable that they're able to see them again.

As he climbs those two steps and he grabs the handrail, he realizes how Crowley has always walked uphill for centuries. All he did was reach out to him. While he was standing in a golden palace, surrounded by his knick-knacks and treasures, proud of his nature. Acting like a good angel, full of silly rules and affectation, only when it was easier. He indulged in his sins when it suited him, allowing himself the small pleasures, bending the rules without ever having the courage to really face them.

Aziraphale was always aware of Crowley, or at least he understood for a long time. He always knew how important he was, that he couldn't do without him, but he never even admitted it to himself. And now that he sees him from behind, slithering sinuously between the seats of this rickety bus, he feels the blood throbbing violently in his chest and hammering his eardrums, until he's vibrating.

Crowley is a little bent over; he leans heavily on one of the handles, then falls on a seat.

Aziraphale has been waiting and waiting, and now he simply can't do it anymore.

He no longer has any excuse, he has no other option. Today he saw a child, Satan’s son, the Antichrist, choose an ordinary life among human beings rather than reign over the Underworld. Aziraphale, on this very day, died and was reborn to then choose the world of men, rather than the one of his fellow angels and a senseless war.

Crowley told him that they now only have one side, their side, and it's just for the two of them. Together.

Aziraphale jumps into the void, because behind him he no longer has earth to support him ( _please, take me on, do not let me fall_ ).

There is only Crowley, in front of him, sitting languidly on that seat, which is waiting for him ( _fall with me, I love you_ ).

When Aziraphale sits down, next to him this time, he takes his hand without thinking. Touches their fingers and their warm palms meet.

At that moment, ratifying the pact of his belonging to Crowley ( _you got me, you chose me_ ).

They don't need to talk.

They are back to the Garden of Eden, when the world was young, and them, with it. Time and centuries and millennia swept away by an infantile, sweet, intimate contact.

And like two little boys they hold hands, as they come back home.  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Notes: credits for the translation review (I am Italian mother language) go to Claudia (IG @justletmehavethisusername)


	3. The stars, like dust

It is a simple gesture, yet it contains within itself every promise hitherto escaped, neglected, or lost.

This is the first time that they touch each other in this way. They both want it. It's a choice.

_When I took your hand I felt your tremble._

_Then you tightened the grip, as if you had to prove something to me._

_You have already done so much, throughout all your existence. And I was blind, I did not know how to understand, I did not want to see._

_Let me hold you tight for once. Let me be your support._

_Has your hand always been so warm? Or your grip always so firm?_

_You have lost everything, yet it seems that you want to give me strength now._

_Countless times I dreamed and screamed my desire for you._

_At the end of the world, you have arrived._

  
  


London lights filter through the large windows of the apartment in Mayfair. The city is as noisy as always, chaotic and crowded, and it still exists thanks to them. In a fleeting moment, Crowley wonders if anyone will ever realize this.

_I don't know what to do, angel._

_You came here because I asked you, because you no longer have a place to stay._

_I don't even have a sofa to sit on. My apartment is not welcoming, I don't think. It represents me._

_Everything here is sharp, angular. Like the bones sticking out of my hips and shoulders._

_Bare and meagre, like the throat that I feel trembling, now, looking at you in the penumbra._

_What do I have to offer you? You already have the world at your feet, rich and warm and full of beauty as you are. As you have always been._

_You remained silent and I don't know what to say._

_The truth is that I will never be able to repay what you did for me. Six thousand years is such a long time, even for us._

_I kept you waiting too long and I didn't hear a single word of blame from you._

_You never even asked me for anything. How can I deserve all this? How can I deserve you?_

  
They can't speak, neither of them.

Aziraphale lets himself slide to the ground, with his back against the wall. His gaze falls on the large desk and on the throne. Finally he lingers for a little longer on Crowley, who is still standing upright in front of him. He holds out his hand again, and Crowley takes it as if it was the only fixed point in the entire universe.

They are sitting shoulder to shoulder now. They are tired and at the same time infinitely lighter, because the weight of the whole world finally slides away from their shoulders.

_I feel your warmth. If I could touch your bare skin, I would burn._

_You are so close and so far, at the same time._

_We haven't said a word since I took your hand on the bus. I wonder what you think._

_Your mind is fast, quick, nervous like your movements. I don't have the courage to look at you, because I'm afraid of what I could read on your face, for once._

_You welcomed me here even though I don't deserve it._

_I would like to thank you, but the words die in my throat._

_I'd like to hold you. I'd like to tell you how I feel._

_I don't deny what I am, but I know I can't aim to have you._

_I am content to feel the weight of your shoulder on mine, barely noticeable, your warmth, your presence._

_As I've always done. I need nothing but your light._

_Now I understand._

_I've had too long to think, but I never understood anything._

_And on this first night of a new Eden and a new life, I finally realize that Heaven and God are not perfection, and that Hell is not the receptacle for all evil._

_Only what we lived counts. Only what we did matters. Only what we are matters._

_Together.  
_  
Aziraphale can no longer wait.

He never left Crowley's hand and now brings his fingers to his mouth. He kisses them with reverence, because they are _his_ hands. Those who fought alongside him. Those who pinned him angrily to a wall a few days ago. Those who heard pinching the strings of a lira, millennia before. Those who touched his chest once, when they felt each other's heartbeat.

Those who no longer intend to leave.

Never again.

_You're doing it, you're really doing it._

_Brand with the fire the shape of your mouth._

Crowley can no longer wait.

For a moment they looked at each other, and it was enough. Crowley reads in the pure and liquid gaze of Aziraphale an overflowing love, dense, sticky like honey, that swallows and envelops him, makes him fall again and again, thousands of times, in the infinite moment that separates their lips. And when they kiss, what Crowley feels, most of all, is the wonder of being accepted, again, to be part of Heaven.

The stars outside are nothing but dust.

All that matters is the Earth they have chosen.

Now all that matters is the two of them.

  
  
  
  
  


Notes: credits for the translation review (I am Italian mother language) go to Claudia (IG @justletmehavethisusername)


End file.
